Throughout Western history, education has been brought to larger shares of the population for longer periods of their lives. With the nation-state, education has become a social right, a basis for democratic self-determination, and a means of providing wealth and social security. And yet, in the US since the 1980s, the effect of education on economic growth began to decrease and social inequality increased after decades of equality.

Has the rise of the education state reached its limits? This book argues that the ascent and descent of public interest in education policy - as seen by waning education front page coverage in leading American, British, French and German newspapers - is connected to the rise and fall of states in the transformation from Western to non-Western globalization and that the prospects are further internationalization or Hellenism.